


Waiting for the Cavalry

by elwing_alcyone



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Awkwardness, Fluff, Gen, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 05:46:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/elwing_alcyone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxy and Dirk have been alone most of their lives, so when they meet in person for the first time, it feels a little strange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting for the Cavalry

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://homesmut.livejournal.com/15949.html?thread=32316493#t32316493) at the kink meme. I had no idea how to tag this!

The Land of Blades and Voices was neither a safe nor suitable environment for a teenage girl coming down from tipsy. Jags of metal, all lethally sharp, sprouted from the ground like reeds. Above the clouds churned and shifted like disturbed water, and the pale, transient light that shone down between them made the blades gleam silver.

That was the landscape across which Roxy picked her way, giving the clusters of metal a wide berth when she could. Not a good place to be suffering the onset of sobriety. She didn't think she'd drunk enough to earn a headache, but the voices that came with the light had a peculiar, piercing quality, and hammers were starting to thump between her temples. Usually that would have been her cue to take a nap and explore some dream-bubbles, but right now she was a girl on a mission. She'd told Dirk she would be paying him a visit in his land, and he'd had the nerve to sound as though he doubted it, and that was when it had become a point of pride. She was going to surprise him in person come hell, high water or totally undeserved hangovers.

Of course, she had to find him first, and that was turning out to be more difficult than she’d expected. On her planet, you could see for miles – theoretically speaking, of course, since her planet was pitch-black except for the high bridges strung with lanterns – but Dirk's had mountains and outcroppings of rock, and canyons and sinkholes you couldn't see until you almost fell into them. It felt as though she'd been wandering for hours. She supposed she could always just pester Dirk and ask where he was, but that would ruin the surprise, and he needed to learn he wasn't the only one who could spring big showmanshippy gestures on people.

It felt like at least another full hour before finally she found him, though it probably wasn't that long. He wasn't even fighting imps or anything, just standing there talking to one of the funny little purple dragon-consorts, with his feet apart and his sword over one shoulder and his other hand in his pocket, because the boy couldn't go five minutes without striking a pose, even when there was no one there to see. He wasn't looking in Roxy's direction, and she was taken aback to realize she really was going to surprise him. Awesome.

She pulled out her phone and sent him a text, her fingers slipping on the keys in her hurry to get it sent before he noticed her.

yo. too cool for school. guess whaere im at.

She got to watch the little flicker of light as the message popped up inside his shades, but her tactical advantage didn't last long: he turned to look over his shoulder and directly at her, as if he'd known she was there. She waved.

He dismissed the consort with a jerk of his head and started towards her. He didn't trouble to skirt around the sharp bits, and she felt unexpectedly self-conscious about how much more cautiously she had to move. She figured it would take at least three martinis before she began to feel confident walking at a normal speed in this place.

Seeing him in the real world, not in a photo or as a streaming video on her computer screen, was starting to muddle her up. Humans didn't move like carapaces or cats, and she wasn't used to seeing it in real life. She wasn't used to people looking at her, even though she couldn't see his eyes to know whether he was or not.

"Hey," he said when he reached her. She'd said approximately a bazillion times that when they met she was going to hug the shit out of him, and he hadn't even acted too opposed to the idea. But now she was here, face-to-face with another human being for the first time in _years_ , she couldn't do it. Maybe it was the way he was standing, with his arms folded, or maybe it was this land with all its hostile edges making her feel like shrinking into herself, but whatever it was, it was fucking dumb, and she was starting to wish she'd crept up behind him and pounced, although that would probably have ended up with a katana against her throat.

"Told you I was gonna visit," she said lightly. "Did ya think I wouldn't?"

"Nah. I was pretty sure you would."

They still weren't hugging or fist-bumping or anything. They were just standing five feet apart, talking like they would on Pesterchum, only here it was awkward as fuck. Roxy wished she'd had a little bit more to drink. Alcohol would take away the awkwardness. It always did.

"Look," she said, "you got to tell me where you're hiding out on Derse. It sucks major ass being awake over there without my good bro. Anyway, you don't get to start a revolution and then abscond! That's bad manners."

"It was a good exit. Now I've got to line up an even better entrance. Shit takes planning."

"Di-stri, did anyone ever tell you your dramatic entrance and exit stuff is kind of incredibly lame?"

"Yeah. You're not seriously going to use that nickname in real life?"

"Duh."

"It sounds stupid."

"Hey, Janey came up with it. That and Ro-lal."

"When she was eleven."

Roxy shrugged, peeved. This wasn't going the way she'd wanted it to. Nothing was. "Well, no one ever gave me a nickname before, so screw you if you don't wanna keep yours, but I'm keeping mine."

"I never said you couldn't." He tilted his head, looking away from her for a moment. "The Auto-Responder says hi."

Roxy was pretty sure the Auto-Responder would give her a hug if he were an actual person. Stupid lousy goddamn boys who lived in glasses.

The glint of metal caught her eye, and this time it wasn't light shining on the blades that were part of the landscape: it was Dirk, retrieving his sword from his strife deck.

"What now?" she said, more inclined than ever to be irritated with him.

He cocked an eyebrow and jerked his head wordlessly at something over her shoulder. She turned and found herself staring straight into a forest of sharp teeth.

The granite basilisk opened its jaws.

Well, if she couldn't get a hug, she'd take a fight.

 

 

Afterwards she and Dirk both sat under the lip of a cleft in the land, where a sheltering canopy of rock blocked out the worst of the migraine-inducing voices. Far at the bottom of the canyon, Roxy could see something gleaming like water, but it was probably more fucking swords.

She rubbed at her bruised knuckles. In the end, she'd felt like clobbering something to death with her bare fists and hadn't bothered retrieving her rifle, but in retrospect maybe that hadn't been such a good idea. Basilisks had tough skin anyway, and the granite variety were predictably the worst of all.

"Here, let me see," said Dirk, and took one of her hands in his without waiting for an answer, examining her hurts. He passed one thumb over the broken skin on the ridge of her knuckles, and she winced, but didn't try to pull away. It was nice to have someone hold her hand this way, and nice to have someone check on her injuries. If anyone else had ever done those things for her before, it had been too long ago to remember.

She looked up at Dirk and felt the last of her sullen anger evaporate. It wasn't his fault he was such a prickly bastard. He was trying. He was pulling a lot of puppet-strings at the moment, and he looked tired, now she could see him up close. His body did a good job of hiding it, but his face showed all sorts of little signs that she wouldn't have been able to see over a webcam.

Anyway, it was difficult to stay mad at someone whose hair looked as if it had been subject to an aggressive feline tongue-bath. She had seen dozens of freshly-groomed cats with tufts of hair sticking up sideways like his, and it was basically adorable that he made it look like that on purpose. She wanted to touch his hair, pet it, see if it was soft and fine like hers, or coarse, or thick. She thought that would be a good thing to do, if he'd let her.

"You're fine," he said, and she looked down at her hand again. He was right, but she'd known that anyway; even where the skin had split there was hardly any blood. She just wished he would keep holding her hand. It had nothing to do with teeny little hypothetical crushes she might or might not have been nursing on and off for the past five years; it could have been anyone, and she still wouldn't have wanted to bring her hand back to chilly empty unheldness once they let go.

But he did let go, because of course he wasn't going to sit there holding her hand forever. She missed his warmth at once, but she tried to shrug it off, along with the way her skin was tingling where he'd touched. She thought she was mostly good at shrugging things off. Mostly.

"So what now?" she asked.

"Now we climb our Echeladders, complete our sidequests and wait for the cavalry to get here." His face was as blank as usual, but she knew how much he had to hate that this part was out of his control.

"You really should come out of hiding on Derse soon. The witch is cracking down hard on rebels, and it'd be good for them to have their leader back."

"I think now would be a bad time to have my attention divided. One distraction on either side could land me in a world of shit, and consequently you and Jane and Jake."

"So don't divide your attention. Go to sleep."

"I don't sleep."

"Uh, yeah, maybe that's the problem, bro."

He lifted one shoulder in an impatient why-do-I-give-a-shit-again shrug. "I don't think I could sleep anyway without Cal."

It took her a moment to remember Cal was the creepy-ass ventriloquist doll he insisted on calling his best friend, like that wasn't a huge insult to Jake and Jane and, oh yeah, her. Not that she was going to say so.

"Why? What happened to Cal?"

He sighed and pulled a card from his sylladex to show her. She saw something that resembled a catnip toy when Frigglish was done with it, torn cloth and stuffing and one glass eye.

"The drones cut him to pieces," Dirk said. "Had to Captchalogue him under 'puppet carnage', but fortunately that's close enough to 'orange' for my fetch modus."

"Oh," Roxy said. That blue eye was watching her out of the Captcha card, she would swear it. "Wow. Sorry, Dirk."

"It's not a huge issue. He's safe for now, and I'll get him fixed up sooner or later."

"For sure. But why would that stop you having a nap?"

Dirk became interested in attempting to pry loose a bit of granite that was cracking away. "Doesn't matter, really."

"Do you, like, sleep with the puppet?"

He didn't answer, but the tips of his ears went ever so slightly pink. Roxy clasped her hands in front of her mouth.

"Oh my God. Dirk."

"Don't say it."

"Cal is like your security blanket."

"I'm serious."

"That. Is. _Precious_."

He got to his feet. "Yeah, okay, I'm gonna go and kill something for its meat before my balls actually crawl back up inside my body."

She pulled him back down again, and her fistful of his shirt felt like something she should hold onto, so she didn't let go, and he didn't make her. "Don't be all like I'm emasculating you or something, I know you don't give a fuck about that. But you have to admit it's cute. So, what, you can't sleep without your plush cuddle-buddy?"

"It's not even like that. Man. How did I know you were going to make a thing out of this?"

"I'm not. Hold on a second." She liberated a bottle from her sylladex and broke it open. "Here you go. Handle this with major carefulness. This is my prized possession."

"It's just a hip-flask. Why are you giving me a hip-flask?"

"To drink, dumbass. It'll make you sleepy."

He passed it back. "No, thanks."

"Come _on_ ," she said. "You need to sleep to give this stuff on Derse your whole attention, and also you need to sleep because you need to sleep! What's the problem, exactly? BFF hugs ain't nothing to get embarrassed about."

"You don't get to say 'ain't', Miss Rainbow Falls."

"You don't get to avoid the point, Mr Tactical Evasiveness Who Can Never Talk About Anything That Sounds Like Feelings. You don't have to worry about getting attacked on this side! I'll, you know, watch over you. I'll be like fuckin' Prince Charming with a laser gun. Make up for all the times you looked out for me on Derse. Just _try_ sleeping."

"What, right here?"

"Sure. Why not?" She scooted back to sit against the cliff wall, stretched out her legs and patted her knees. That was how she used to get Frigglish to sit on her lap. She saw no reason to think it wouldn't work just as well on aloof best friends, and anyway, that descriptor couldn't be all that accurate, because aloof people didn't snuggle up with puppets to sleep. "Comfy pillow, see? The back of your head's gonna think it died and went to heaven."

She concluded through rigorous scientific observation that there was a (MATHS) percent chance he was rolling his eyes behind his shades, and it hardly even occurred to her to think he was actually thinking about doing what she said until he crawled over to where she was sitting, shifted onto his back, and lowered his head gingerly onto her lap. "Weird," he muttered.

"What is?"

He didn't answer. From this angle she could see he had his eyes shut.

"Your head is like a giant meowcat," she informed him.

"My head isn't giant."

She tried one last time to resist the temptation to pet his hair, and failed miserably. She expected him to protest, ask what the fuck she thought she was doing, or at the very least warn her not to mess up the architecture, but he didn't say anything at all. His eyes were still closed. His chest rose and fell.

"Are you asleep yet?"

"It's been twenty goddamn seconds, Lalonde."

He wasn't a cat, he was a person, and he was warm and real and right there with her, a weight on her outstretched legs and a weight inside her chest that made a smile brim out of her. She wanted to lean over and bundle his entire head up in her arms, but she just kept slowly, gently, quietly stroking his hair. She sort of wished she knew a lullaby or something, but then again, you had to be a decent singer to pull those off. Probably.

The windblown unearthly voices strained between the rocks, but from here they just sounded like someone talking in another room. Out on the other side of the canyon, she could see the light coming down between the clouds in ghostly veils and vanishing again. She hummed a little to herself, forgetting that she couldn't sing. Her headache was already gone.


End file.
